Note: By 1820 the condition of the original parchment of the signed Declaration (signed July 4, 1776 by 56 brave men) was rapidly deteriorating. So John Quincy Adams commissioned William J. Stone to create official facsimile copies of the Declaration using a new wet-ink transfer process. The process called for the surface of the Declaration to be moistened and then pressed against a clean copper plate transferring some of the original ink to the surface of the plate. Two hundred copies of the Declaration were distributed to various important people and places. Today 31 of the 201 Stone facsimiles printed in 1823 are known to exist.